ghosts that we knew will flicker from view
by TrappedGenius
Summary: She was the one exception. Spoilers for The Name of the Doctor, quite a lot of angst. Oneshot.


**A/N: After such a fantastic episode and a hopefully-not-goodbye to our dearest River Song (I don't think we've seen the last of her - for reasons I won't go in to) I thought I'd write the Doctor's thoughts when he sees her in the graveyard. I don't own Doctor Who. Oh, and spoilers - but not the major ones.**

* * *

Face grim, the Doctor stalks through the graveyard. He honestly doesn't know what's going to happen - all he knows is that it won't be good, and that frustrates him.

Clara isn't following him, he realises. He spins around, about to tell her to hurry up, but the words die on his tongue. He freezes as he sees her. River Song. His River Song. An echo, perhaps, but still his River. The woman he was so sure he would never see again.

She looked at him with a sad sort of longing, obviously believing that he couldn't see her. How could he not? He always saw her, and she was always there. But what now?

The Doctor realised very quickly that he could not bring himself to talk to her. And perhaps - well, definitely - it was selfish. He could see how much she was hurting, how much she was willing him to see her, hear her. But how much would it hurt _him _to talk to his River one final time, to have to say goodbye.

It would be a sort of pain that was unimaginable.

He wanted to talk to her. Of course he did. There had been days when he would do nothing but talk to River, and days when talking to her would make the difference between him giving up on the world and loving it. And that was the problem - he simply could not do that knowing it was for the last time. He hated goodbyes and he hated endings.

So instead he looked at her for the longest of seconds, being very careful to keep his face as grim as it was three seconds ago. He had remembered every curl in her hair, every inch of her skin, but his memories did not do her justice. Could reading through pages in a deep blue diary late at night when Clara had gone home conjure up the exact colour of her eyes, or curve of her lips? Of course not. But here she was. His River Song.

"Well, come on, then!" he called, breathing heavily.

Clara glanced at him quickly before turning back to River, who was saying something that he couldn't quite hear very quickly.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath. This was going to hurt. But not as much as saying goodbye would hurt - so he would take this as the lesser of two evils.

"Who are you talking to?" He continued, walking angrily back to the pair. The closer he got the harder it got. "We need to get-"

_No._ How...?

He stopped. Why would River be buried here, at Trenzalore? She had... Died, in the library, light-years from this cursed place. No, no, no, this was all wrong, this wasn't what was supposed to be _happening. _

"River," he managed, keeping his gaze away from his wife and on her tombstone. Kneeling beside it, he stroke the engraved letters as gently as if he was stroking her cheek, fighting the urge to turn around and do so.

"That can't be right," he heard Clara say behind him.

"No, it can't," he replied.

"She's not dead!"

He sighed. "Oh, she's dead I'm afraid, she's been dead for a very long time."

"Yeah, probably should have mentioned that. Never the right time!" River says, and he can't help but smile at hearing her voice again.

"But I met her!" Clara insists.

He turns slightly, not quite enough to see River. "Long story. But her grave can't be here..."

"Doctor!" calls out Clara suddenly, and he spins around. What next? At least these ones were well-dressed.

His screwdriver refuses to work, and it's hard to concentrate when he's trying his best not to react to River's voice and to wait until Clara has repeated what she's said.

But they escape as they always do.

It's only then that he realises he left out the detail that River is, indeed, his wife.

Oops.

But it hurts to talk about the days filled with River. No one else could possibly understand, not even Clara. It was River that understood. She was the exception.

Always, River Song was the exception.

* * *

**I wanted to write beyond this, but it hurt way too much.**


End file.
